British Airways has just announced plans to add a second route to Australia, and of course it will be a fifth freedom route. I’m curious if this has been in the cards for some time, or if this is happening in light of developments in the Middle East in recent weeks.
In this post:
British Airways launching flights to Melbourne, Australia
As of January 9, 2027, British Airways plans to launch a second daily, year-round flight to Australia. Specifically, the airline plans to fly from London (LHR) to Melbourne (MEL) via Kuala Lumpur (KUL). The schedule will be as follows:
BA33 London to Kuala Lumpur departing 9:10PM arriving 6:05PM (+1 day)
BA33 Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne departing 7:45PM arriving 6:50AM (+2 days)
BA34 Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur departing 4:35PM arriving 9:35PM
BA34 Kuala Lumpur to London departing 11:15PM arriving 5:20AM (+1 day)
The segment between London and Kuala Lumpur covers a distance of 6,593 miles, and is blocked at 12hr55min eastbound and 14hr5min westbound. Meanwhile the Australia segment covers a distance of 3,918 miles, and is blocked at 8hr5min to Australia and 8hr to Malaysia.
British Airways intends to use a Boeing 787-9 for the route, featuring 215 seats. This includes eight first class seats, 38 business class seats, 39 premium economy seats, and 130 economy seats.
Each of the segments can be booked individually, meaning that British Airways has fifth freedom rights between Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne. This flight number is actually a continuation of British Airways’ existing route between London and Kuala Lumpur. So without a capacity boost between London and Kuala Lumpur, availability in that market will probably decrease considerably.
My take on British Airways expanding in Australia
For context, this new route to Melbourne represents a service resumption, as British Airways last flew there regularly a couple of decades ago, and at the time, the service was operated via Singapore (SIN). Furthermore, this is British Airways’ second route to Australia, as the airline also has a fifth freedom flight to Sydney (SYD), via Singapore.
It’s also interesting to consider the other carriers that have recently added flights to Melbourne, all via different intermediate points. For example, Turkish Airlines launched Melbourne flights via Singapore, while Finnair is launching Melbourne flights via Bangkok (BKK). So this seems like a logical enough route addition for British Airways, and a couple of thoughts come to mind.
First, I’m curious if this new route has been in the works for quite some time, or if British Airways only decided on this in recent weeks, in light of the current conflict. After all, it seems to me like for a substantial amount of time, some people may think twice before flying through the Gulf, if they can avoid it.
While I hate to frame it this way, oil prices aside, many European and Asian carriers probably have some new flying opportunities due to the situation the Gulf carriers are facing, especially given the markets in which they historically dominated.
My guess is that this route has been in the cards for some time, and that perhaps the conflict caused the airline to finally follow through on this. If anything, I’m surprised the route isn’t launching sooner.
Second, I think the Kuala Lumpur stopover point is interesting. I suppose it’s logical that each new fifth freedom flight to Melbourne in recent times has operated via a different Asian airport.
British Airways adding this fifth freedom flight while not increasing capacity between London and Kuala Lumpur suggests that the route is really struggling. I have to imagine British Airways will want to mostly fill this route with passengers traveling between the UK and Australia, given that Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne has some low fares, and I can’t imagine people will pay a huge premium to fly British Airways.
While Kuala Lumpur is a hub for oneworld partner Malaysia Airlines, the carriers don’t otherwise have a joint venture or closer cooperation that would cover these flights.
Bottom line
As of January 2027, British Airways will launch a route from London to Melbourne via Kuala Lumpur, using a Boeing 787. The airline is simply maintaining existing capacity between London and Kuala Lumpur, while the Melbourne fifth freedom service is what’s new. This will be the first time in around 20 years that the airline flies to Melbourne, and it complements service to Sydney.
What do you make of Finnair’s new Melbourne route?
Commenter from Malaysia adjacent to the industry here. I'll be perfectly honest, from my own perspective. British Airways are doing far better than I had expected them to. Part of the factor as to why is because of Malaysia Airlines being effectively cramed from the front to back on their two daily services. Malaysia Airlines are consistently filling their London sectors; Paris is also flying at very, very healthy loads that I see as very...
Commenter from Malaysia adjacent to the industry here. I'll be perfectly honest, from my own perspective. British Airways are doing far better than I had expected them to. Part of the factor as to why is because of Malaysia Airlines being effectively cramed from the front to back on their two daily services. Malaysia Airlines are consistently filling their London sectors; Paris is also flying at very, very healthy loads that I see as very much sustainable in time to come. Granted that a very portion of their traffic is connecting onwards through Kuala Lumpur rather than being O&D traffic in itself, its share is often overplayed especially on their London flights. There is a very significant diaspora of Malaysians in the UK and London is their only connection having axed Manchester some two decades ago and many choose to study in the UK too.
It's also interesting to note that Malaysia Airlines' operations to London only codeshares with Firefly (Still a subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines) and Singapore Airlines only, no mention of British Airways who is in itself a OneWorld partner in it. Parallel to this is the fact that British Airways' flights to Kuala Lumpur also operates with codeshares only with Iberia (IAG), and American Airlines. So in large parts, British Airways' traffic is rather organic and demand parallel to existing offerings would, to me at least, indicate room for the consideration for any additional opportunities to be pursued even if superficially it may seem more benign than ideal.
However, where British Airways and Malaysia Airlines do have codeshare agreements are Malaysia Airlines operating on domestic, regional international, and Oceania markets that notably, Malaysia Airlines would not directly be competing against British Airways with (ie: Perth, Adelaide, Melbroune, Auckland but not Sydney). So with this context, it very much provides a great depth of context as to why British Airways would begin to see Melbourne via Kuala Lumpur as possible given that their flights to Kuala Lumpur lands and sits idle for six hours before only departing back to London.
British Airways choosing KUL to connect onwards to an Australian destination is not a new phenomenon. Although it may only be the second carrier to do so, it is interesting to note that Turkish had opted to launch their Sydney route (without fifth freedom however) through Kuala Lumpur. Though that had started in 2025 when the traffic quota between Australia and Malaysia had widened significantly, it is important to note that 2026 was when the Australia-Malaysia Open Skies agreement were to go into effect.
Malaysia Airlines already operated five weekly services to Brisbane, daily to Adelaide, double daily to Perth, triple daily to Sydney and Melbourne, and 10 weekly to Auckland. About a third of the Malaysia-Oceania traffic only began operations in the last year, and Malaysia Airlines still seems to see room to expand especially given that in the FSC market, they would be the only operator with neither Qantas nor Air New Zealand having any non-stop O&D services with Kuala Lumpur itself. British Airways sticking itself into this route would effectively compete with one carrier, and in that case, it even already carries their codesharing traffic.
Of course I would nuance my own take here with the fact that my perspective may inherently be biased by proximity. But perhaps a cynical take would be one where Singapore may even be considered a more saturated market given they have on the order of half a dozen flights between Singapore and London alone in addition to more than a dozen more to Western Europe not to mention North America where Kuala Lumpur sees only KLM and British Airways as the only operators from Western Europe, the expected marginal yield potential seems to be greater where they already command by percentage a greater share than one as wildly competitive as say Bangkok or Singapore.
It would in fact be my personal take that Kuala Lumpur is one of those airports that has massive room for expansion and considering its days a decade or two ago where they had a network magnitudes more widespared than their current offerings. Cynics would be quick to point out that it was in fact an era filled with politically motivated service offerings and that financial viability may not have been the utmost priority. But to see it being a shell of what it once was in this day and age, you would get a sense that maybe it's worth considering once again.
On a more optimistic outlook, it's nice to see that Lufthansa had already announced a planned relaunch for non-stop services to Kuala Lumpur from Frankfurt on their B789 towards the end of this year.
I think there's much to look forward to even if it may be a slow burn over here. Notwithstanding extraordinary circumstances like Covid or conflicts beginning left, right and centre, Kuala Lumpur has a lot to offer not only from where it is located, but also that the airport sits on land that from when it was conceived, sized to allow for ample expansion. They just need to play their cards right and let time work the rest.
They're also going to Gatwick from LGW. The one thing I was surprised with the war happening for the foreseeable future is that they haven't tried PKX, CAN or TFU since it's the first year of visa free travel for brits.
You’d think this will struggle to pick up leisure travel on the MEL-KUL leg with MH, AirAsia and Batik Air all competing for the tourist dollar and TK/SQ/TR/JQ/QF all offering flights to SIN for competitive Asian connections.
Yeah I’m with Tim. For the foreseeable future there will be demand for routes via Asia to Europe from Oz. A lot of capacity currently goes through the Middle East that will need a home.
50k AA miles and small taxes to fly in first class for 9 hours isn’t bad! I’ve done the Singapore Syd route a few times. On the old seat ugh.
the marginalization of the Middle East carriers is underway.
No matter how hard they try to frame it, having missiles land at DXB over and over again is bad for perception of the area.
Add in the the UK and Australia have logically very strong ties and this is an easy route to start even in good times and, as Ben notes, routing via KUL is an easy choice.
That's a bit of wishful thinking. Time will tell.
Curious - is this going to have the new BA hard product or the old skinny seats circa 2003
@ Mike -- By the time this launches, all 787-9s should have the new Club Suites, I expect.